JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia welcomed on Thursday FIFA’s announcement that it will take legal action in the Kingdom against a pirate TV channel illegally broadcasting the World Cup.

Riyadh has denied allegations that beoutQ is based in Saudi Arabia and is working to combat its operations.

The Ministry of Media said the FIFA action would “supplement the relentless efforts by the KSA Ministry of Commerce and Investment in combatting beoutQ's activities and beIN’s illegal broadcasting within the country.”

The statement said this would reinforce Saudi Arabia’s efforts to protecting intellectual property rights within the Kingdom.

The Ministry of Media said it blamed beIN Sports, a subsidiary of the Al Jazeera Media Network, for “falsely and unfairly” connecting Saudi Arabia with beoutQ.

Saudi Arabia has banned Qatar-based Al Jazeera and beIN Sports from broadcasting in the country as part of a boycott against Doha over its support for extremist groups.

beIN Sports says it holds the rights to broadcast the 2018 World Cup in the Middle East and North Africa.

The ministry accused the network of providing a media platform for “terrorists to propagate their violent message.”

The statement reported on the Saudi Press Agency said that while beoutQ's pirate broadcasts have been available in the Kingdom, its set-top boxes are available in, other nations in the Middle East and North Africa and the pirate broadcasts are targeted at that region, including Qatar but also Eastern Europe.

The ministry said beIN Sports had engineered a smear campaign against Saudi Arabia.

Nestle, AT&T pull YouTube ads over pedophile concerns

A video from a popular YouTuber and a report from Wired showed that pedophiles have made unseemly comments on innocuous videos of kids

YouTube has faced advertiser boycotts in the past, including a widespread boycott in early 2017

Updated 22 February 2019

AP

February 22, 2019 04:49

0

SAN FRANCISCO, US: Several companies, including AT&T and Nestle, are pulling advertisements from YouTube over concerns about inappropriate comments on videos of children.
A video from a popular YouTuber and a report from Wired showed that pedophiles have made unseemly comments on innocuous videos of kids. The comments reportedly included timestamps that showed where kids innocently bared body parts.
YouTube says it disabled comments on tens of millions of videos and deleted offending accounts and channels.
Nestle and Fortnite maker Epic Games say they paused ads on YouTube while the company works on the issue. AT&T says it has removed ads until YouTube can “protect our brand from offensive content of any kind.”
YouTube has faced advertiser boycotts in the past, including a widespread boycott in early 2017. Since then YouTube has made efforts to be more transparent about how it deals with offensive comments and videos on its site.
But the latest flap shows how much of an ongoing problem offensive content continues to be, said eMarketer video analyst Paul Verna.
“When you think about the scope of that platform and what they’re up against, it is really like a game of whack-a-mole to try to prevent these problems from happening,” he said.
Still, because of the powerful advertising reach of YouTube’s parent Google, brands are unlikely to stay away from YouTube for long, he said.
Digital ad spending in the US is expected to grow 19 percent in 2019 to $129.34 billion this year, or 54 percent of estimated total US ad spending, according to eMarketer, with Google and Facebook accounting for nearly 60 percent of that total.
“At the end of the day, there’s a duopoly out there of Google and Facebook,” for digital advertising, he said. “Any brand that doesn’t play the game with either is potentially leaving a big marketing opportunity on the table.”